Perfect digital archivisation kills the evanescence that made media culturally fertile

Evidence

In a time of cultural rationing, of modernist broadcasting, a time, that is, in which there were no endless reruns, no VCRs, the programmes had a precious evanescence. They were translated into memory and dream at the very moment they were being seen for the first time. This is quite different from the instant — and increasingly pre-emptive — monumentalisation of postmodern media productions through “makings of” documentaries and interviews. So many of these productions enjoy the odd fate of being stillborn into perfect archivisation, forgotten by the culture while immaculately memorialised by the technology. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 370

Categorization

• SEED: The paradox that perfect preservation yields cultural forgetting — ‘stillborn into perfect archivisation’ — is a strong essay hook about streaming-era abundance versus scarcity-era magic.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier points on broadcast television’s unique cross-class reach and the pre-emptive monumentalisation of prestige media. — connects to: Rapid online copying now kills new music scenes before they mature — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 250; Mass information systems destroy the aesthetic experience they claim to promote — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 128; The internet dismantled the mechanisms that once produced era-defining cultural trends — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 30 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass information systems destroy the aesthetic experience they claim to promote #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 128
• The internet dismantled the mechanisms that once produced era-defining cultural trends #expands (0.75) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 30
• Twenty-first-century pop culture stagnated as artists mined the past rather than the future #expands (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 381